By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta
CAIRO/RAMALLAH (Reuters) -An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced persons in Gaza City killed at least 15 Palestinians on Saturday, hours after two strikes in the occupied West Bank killed nine militants including a local Hamas commander, Hamas said.
The Israeli military said the first of two West Bank airstrikes hit a vehicle in a town near the city of Tulkarm, targeting a militant cell it said was on its way to carry out an attack.
A Hamas statement said one of those killed was a commander of its Tulkarm brigades, while its ally Islamic Jihad claimed the other four men who died in the strike as its fighters.Â
Hours later, a second airstrike in the area targeted another group of militants who had fired on troops, Israel’s military said, during what it described as a counterterrorism operation in Tulkarm.
Palestinian news agency WAFA said four people had died in that strike, and Hamas said all nine of those killed in the two Israeli attacks in the West Bank were fighters.
Violence in the West Bank was on the rise before the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and has risen since, with frequent Israeli raids in the territory, which is among those that the Palestinians seek for a state.
There has also been an increase in anti-Israeli street attacks by Palestinians.
The latest strikes in the Palestinian territories came amid Israel’s growing tensions with Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group that have fanned fears of a widened conflict in the Middle East.
The U.S. and international partners including France, Britain, Italy and Egypt, continued diplomatic contacts on Saturday seeking to prevent further regional escalation.
Hamas said it had begun a “broad consultation process” to choose a new leader three days after the assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, who was the face of the group’s international diplomacy. Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel and vowed to retaliate. Israel has not claimed or denied responsibility.
GAZA STRIKES
In the Gaza Strip, at least 15 people were killed in the Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced persons in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, the Hamas run-government media office said.
The Israeli military said the school was being used as a command centre for Hamas, to hide militants and manufacture weapons. Hamas has denied Israeli accusations that it operates from civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals.
Earlier on Saturday, Israeli strikes in the enclave killed six people in a house in the southern area of Rafah and two others in Gaza City, Gaza health officials said.
The Israeli military said its forces had struck militants and destroyed Hamas infrastructure in Rafah and elsewhere in the enclave.Â
At least 39,550 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials. The offensive was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 abducted, according to Israeli tallies.
A high-level Israeli delegation made a brief visit to Cairo on Saturday in an attempt to resume Gaza ceasefire negotiations, Egyptian airport authority sources said. The Israeli officials returned to Israel hours later, Israeli media said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of trying to add changes to the “outline” of a potential agreement, referring to a proposal U.S. President Joe Biden laid out in May. Hamas has blamed Netanyahu, saying he does not want to stop the war.
Chances of a breakthrough appear low as regional tension has soared following the assassination of Haniyeh, Hamas’s top leader, on Wednesday, a day after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a senior military commander from Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran.
Haniyeh’s death was one in a series of killings of senior Hamas figures as the Gaza war nears its 11th month, and it fuelled concern that the conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East war.
Israel has not said whether or not it was behind Haniyeh’s assassination. But Netanyahu said earlier this week that Israel had delivered crushing blows to Iran’s proxies of late, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke separately to French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Saturday on the need to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza and to prevent the conflict from spreading, the State Department said.
Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, stressed in a phone call with Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, that recent developments in the region were “unprecedented, very dangerous” and threatening to stability, Egypt’s government said.
In addition, the Italian Foreign Ministry said: “Italy makes an appeal to Iran, calling on it for restraint and to contribute to a phase of de-escalation throughout the Mediterranean region and the Middle East.” It added that the message had been delivered to the Iranian ambassador in Rome.
